Mobile telephones are becoming ubiquitous. Once owned and carried only by the affluent, or by persons in specialized occupations that both required and supplied them, mobile phones are now owned by the many, and sometimes even by the majority of a given population. And no longer are mobile telephones used by only a small segment of the population, but rather now by people of all ages and walks of life.
There are several reasons for this widespread use of mobile phones. The first and foremost reason, of course, is technology. The development of a cellular system of organizing radio traffic has made possible the subscribing of thousands of customers in a single metropolitan area. Improved multiplexing and modulation techniques have contributed to the ability to handle vast numbers of customers. Coverage has improved as well; that is, the amount of geographic area in which a mobile-system subscriber is within range of a network antenna. At the same time, the cost of the mobile telephone itself and of a subscription to a mobile communications network have fallen and made mobile phone use affordable. Improved technology has also led to the development of ever-smaller and easier-to-use phones. As such improvements in technology often do, rising mobile-phone popularity led to increasingly large markets, which in turn encouraged further innovation.
Another, although perhaps secondary reason for the widespread popularity of mobile phones is their increasing functionality. Once simply radios or radio telephones, mobile phones have evolved to include such diverse functions as calendaring appointments, storing addresses and phone numbers, playing games, and even downloading Web pages. These latter functions, of course, attribute their existence to the technological increases that have provided greater processor power, memory and data storage, and wireless networks able to transmit a large amount of data. Correspondingly, the mobile phones' visual display has been greatly enhanced over the years. Originally, phones were often not equipped with a display, the user simply listened for a dial tone or dialed a series of numbers and depressed a button to transmit. To a limited extent, the various keys might be programmable, that is a special function assigned to a sequence of keys allowing for speed dialing (where pressing only a short sequence of keys nevertheless causes a full, prestored telephone number to be transmitted so that a connection may be established). The advent of simple displays, however, greatly improved upon this type of feature. Even using a simple display that shows only ten numbers, the user may view the number that is being dialed, or if the service is available, the number associated with an incoming caller. Originally, displays were made up chiefly of light emitting diodes (LEDs) that could form shapes corresponding to numbers and simple symbols. Other LEDs might be used to indicate an “on” or connected state, or to provide an indication that an incoming call was being received.
A huge increase in the variety of graphics that could be displayed accompanied the use of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) in mobile phones. An LCD uses a liquid-crystal substance sandwiched in between two thin pieces of transparent material. Small, almost invisible electrical connectors are distributed throughout the transparent plates in order to apply a small electrical potential to selected areas of the display. The electrical potential causes the crystals in the liquid crystal material to realign, blocking the light that would otherwise pass through and producing an image. Different filters can be used to produce different colors. The result is a far more versatile display than was easily achievable with the previous LED technology. Although an LCD consumes somewhat more power than an LED in its operation, batteries have also increased their storage capacity at the same time that many of the other mobile phone components are reducing their consumption.
The availability of this processor and display technology has led to the increased use of certain mobile-phone features. Although still valuable for voice communication, the proportion of use of a mobile phone dedicated to that function has decreased. Finding increasing use in many cases are the calendaring and game-playing functions. In fact, devices called personal digital assistance (PDAs), which evolved from a hand-held electrical device with no communication capability, are increasingly able to connect with a wireless network in the same way as a mobile phone. Whether any given device is basically a mobile phone with organizer functions added, or a PDA with mobile-communication functions added, the result is that the lines of distinction between the two devices are increasingly blurred. The same is true, although to a lesser extent for portable game-playing devices. Such devices that began as portable electronic games, are now able to connect with wireless networks either to perform the functions previously associated with mobile telephones or actually to enhance the game playing experience itself by allowing the game station to connect with a central server or with other users to utilize the capacity available there and in fact play the game with other participants.
Because of the convergence of these functions in differently-designed devices, such devices will collectively be referred to herein as “mobile stations”. A mobile station is a portable electronic device having a display, preferably an LCD, along with user input apparatus such as a keypad. The mobile station preferably, although not necessarily, also has wireless communication capability.
The LCD on a mobile station may often be made larger, relative to the size of the station itself, than was previously done on mobile-phone LED displays. The larger screen is valuable in the game-playing environment, with modern games often requiring different areas of the screen be available for status information and creating the actual game environment. The larger display screen is also useful when Web pages are downloaded, if the mobile station has such capability. Although abbreviated versions of Web pages are at times available for downloading onto small handheld devices, Web pages still tend to be information rich and quickly use up the available display. Some features end up being quite small, or almost unintelligible. As mobile stations have evolved, however, there appears to be a trend toward the use of smaller and smaller devices. Naturally, this is possible because of the technological advances that have made components smaller and smaller, and allowed for the mobile stations themselves to be reduced in size. The smaller units have gained wide acceptance, primarily because they can be easily stowed in a pocket, belt-clip or hand bag, and take up very little room even when protected by a protective cover. Generally speaking, when the phones are used for wireless voice communication, a relatively small screen is still satisfactory. This trend to small phones runs counter, however, to the needs of mobile station users who like to use their device to play games or surf the Internet. This creates the need to enhance the game-playing and Web-surfing experience by allowing a user to connect multiple mobile stations to produce a single larger, high-resolution display. The present invention provides just such a solution.